Statement by the City’s Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille
City spends over half a billion on EPWP wages
Today I inspected and assisted in the work being done by the City of Cape
Town’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers in Kensington.
As part of our commitment to redress, we have made every effort to ensure
the continued success of EPWP projects within our city. In so doing, we are
ensuring quality service delivery while investing in the lives and futures of our
residents.
Since 2011, the City of Cape Town has created almost 160 000 EPWP work
opportunities, with R555 million being in direct wages to EPWP workers.
These wages have granted immediate poverty relief for poor and
unemployed residents. Our own research has indicated that these wages are
ploughed directly into local businesses, creating local economic
development within communities.
Although, the EPWP work is temporary, the various opportunities and
extensive training empower the workers by increasing their employability
through skills training. Job opportunities include on-the-job training for
students, and positions as general cleaners, data collectors/capturers,
community liaison officers, clerks and operators.
Our efforts have also been recognised by the National Department of Public
Works, who awarded us three KAMOSO Awards for the pioneering EPWP
projects we have implemented. For 2011/12, our Social Development and
Early Childhood Development Directorate was honoured as the Best
Municipal and District Project in the Social Sector, while the Energy,
Environmental Spatial Planning Directorate was named the Best Innovative
Project in the Environmental and Culture Sector. The most recent accolade
was the in 2014/15 period, within the Social Sector: Best Municipality category
for the EPWP workers we employ in home-based care, awareness drives,
substance abuse programmes, the rehabilitation of street people, and as
beach safety officers.
The project I assisted with today is the Women at Work programme where
women are extensively trained in road maintenance. They work hard to
attend to the 12 200 potholes repaired by the City every month. The excellent
quality of our roads is attributed to workers like these, who ensure that City’s
own benchmark of fixing a pothole within 72 hours of it being reported is
maintained.
This project is primarily geared towards facilitating gender transformation in
the workplace by transitioning women into a traditionally male-dominated
environment. By doing this, we aim to address some of the structural
inequalities faced by women in the economy.
For the current financial year, we will underscore our commitment to our
Expanded Public Works Programme by spending an additional R138,6 million
on work opportunities.
Unemployed residents are encouraged take up these opportunities by
contacting their local subcouncil office in order to register on the City’s job
seeker’s database from which we randomly select candidates.
The success of this project illustrates our determination to build a caring and
inclusive city where EPWP help us to further freedom, fairness and opportunity
for the poor in our city. We will continue to use our opportunity to govern to
build on the successes that we have achieved thus far, so that we can make
further progress possible, together.